A STATEWIDE crackdown on student cyber bullies is set to be ramped up with increased tracking of social media use on State Government school laptops.

State schools will from next year be offered a social media monitoring program that can be installed on school-issued laptops.

The program is similar to one already used in some private and state schools that monitors keywords such as "ugly" and "pornographic" and provides reports to principals. It can also block or moderate content.

One Sunshine Coast school reported intercepting messages to high school girls asking them for naked photographs and self-harm messages.

The roll-out comes amid a jump in offensive sites and posts being shut down or removed by a special cybersafety team within the Department of Education, Training and Employment.

The department's "Cybersafety and Reputation Management" team has this year responded to 278 incidents, up from 212 last year.

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Comments on this story

Lorenzo Posted at 1:07 AM November 02, 2012

Hahaha because kids are running rampant on Facebook saying "hey guys, check out this pornographic image of the anatomy of our female fellow at school." Maybe these software companies should actually try to have a handle on how social media works for this sort of stuff first? Waste of time anyway, kids aren't stupid, and will figure out a way to uninstall it almost immediately.

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